Smokin' Banana Peels Probably Does Sound Like This

Album: The Dead Milkmen, Beelzebubba, 1988

Acquired: I bought this either in late summer or early fall 1989. If I got it during the summer, it would have come from one of the two record stores at Pembroke Mall. (When was the last time a small mall housed two record stores?) If I bought it in the fall, I got it at the record store in New River Valley Mall. The important thing to know, as I'll soon explain, is that I picked up Beelzebubba either right before or right at the beginning of my sophomore year of college.

Best Track: "Stuart"

Lasting Memory: Despite being big MTV-created stars in 1989-1990, the Milkmen played a concert at a small Blacksburg bar called Buddy's in January (?) 1990. I got in with about 300 other folks because I was working there as the worst waiter ever and also because I was a regular at Buddy's Sunday night comedy show. The place comfortably held about 100 people.

Moshing and stagediving were inevitable in such a crowded space when a semi-punk band was playing, and the next day's Collegiate Times review of the concert began, "A large shirtless man stands on the edge of the stage ready to hurl himself into the audience. The Dead Milkmen show has begun."

I was that large shirtless man.

I can't help but feel proud about having earned this bit of anonymous and fleeting immortality, even as I now realize how sophomoric stagediving is. (Not to mention dangerous for the other concertgoers because I was running about 250 lbs. at the time.)

In my defense, everything about the Milkmen was sophomoric. Their playing was high school jazz band level. Their lyrics, while funny, derive all their humor from petulance, misogyny, condescension, and glorification of substance abuse. In the Milkmen's case, the methods and substances of choice were either chugging bleach ("Don't you want to hang out with the Bleach Boys baby/ In a land where ministers murder golf pros?") or smoking banana peels ("Smokin' banana peels, see how it feels/ Living is easy with ice cubes/ The world is swimmin' with electric eels/ Talk seriously to me brother/ Smokin' banana peels, savin' the seals").

All this still makes me laugh. Some of it, such as "Brat in the Frat" and "Bad Party," also still make me feel smug. In "Bad Party," the Milkmen threaten "I'm gonna shoot the stereo/ If they don't start playing my kind of music" and to "take the host hostage/ Oh what a clever play on words." In "Brat in the Frat," the boys from just outside Philadelphia perfectly summed up my early college opinion of fraternity brothers:

I do not like you college brat
I do not like you and your frat
I do not like you at the shore
I do not like you drunk on Coors
I do not like your average life
I hope you do not take a wife
I hope you don't decide to breed
Cause that's one thing I do not need

A sentiment I never did and never will share with the Milkmen is misogyny, but, again, when they indulge this baser instinct, it's damn funny. In a sloppy but still somehow convincing imitation of James Brown and his band, the Milkmen offer RC's Mom," which is a litany of very specific ways the Godfather of Soul is going to "beat my wife." He is, for instance, "Gonna hit her with a lead pipe/ Gonna smack her with a two-by-four." The song should be thoroughly off-putting, but it just isn't. For that, I can only say to the Milkmen, "Nicely done horrible job, guys."
The Milkmen fit into a strange subgenre of not-quite-punk Andy-Kaufmanesque musical performance art comedy that flourished briefly in the late 1980s. Other bands that worked in this what-the-fudge field are King Missile ("Detachable Penis" anyone?) and Butthole Surfers. I'll declare it a net positive for American popular culture that this kind of music surfaced for a short time and then quickly retreated to the underground. Too much of a bad thing that can sometimes be good is definitely a bad thing. Or something.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my life is slightly more enjoyable because I get to listen to "Stuart" every now and then. If I only got to listen to "Stuart," though, I probably would decide to "hang out with the Bleach Boys in a world where midgets run for mayor."

Here's Stuart in all it's lyrical and sonic ignominy:

You know what, Stuart, I LIKE YOU. You're not like the other
people, here, in the trailer park.

Oh, don't go get me wrong. They're fine people, they're
good Americans. But they're content to sit back, maybe
watch a little Mork and Mindy on channel 57, maybe kick
back a cool, Coors 16-ouncer. They're good, fine people,
Stuart. But they don't know ... what the queers are doing
to the soil!

You know that Jonny Wurster kid, the kid that delivers papers
in the neighborhood. He's a foreign kid. Some of the neighbors
say he smokes crack, but I don't believe it.

Anyway, for his tenth birthday, all he wanted was a Burrow Owl.
Kept bugging his old man. "Dad, get me a burrow owl. I'll never
ask for anything else as long as I live." So the guy
breaks down and buys him a burrow owl.

Anyway, 10:30, the other night, I go out in my yard, and there's
the Wurster kid, looking up in the tree. I say, "What are
you looking for?" He says "I'm looking for my burrow owl."
I say, "Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick. Everybody knows
the burrow owl lives. In a hole. In the ground. Why the hell do you
think they call it a burrow owl, anyway?" Now Stuart, do you
think a kid like that is going to know what the queers are
doing to the soil?

I first became aware of this about ten years ago, the summer
my oldest boy, Bill Jr. died. You know that carnival comes into
town every year? Well this year they came through with a ride
called The Mixer. The man said, "Keep your head, and arms, inside
the Mixer at all times." But Bill Jr, he was a DAAAREDEVIL, just
like his old man. He was leaning out saying "Hey everybody,
Look at me! Look at me!" Pow! He was decapitated! They found
his head over by the snow cone concession.

A few days after that, I open up the mail. And there's a pamphlet
in there. From Pueblo, Colorado, and it's addressed to Bill, Jr.
And it's entitled, "Do you know what the queers are doing to our
soil?"

Now, Stuart, if you look at the soil around any large US city,
there's a big underground homosexual population. Des Moines, Iowa,
for an example. Look at the soil around Des Moines, Stuart.
You can't build on it; you can't grow anything in it. The government
says it's due to poor farming. But I know what's really going on,
Stuart. I know it's the queers. They're in it with the aliens.
They're building landing strips for gay Martians, I swear to
God.

You know what, Stuart, I like you. You're not like the other
people, here in this trailer park.

Up Next: The Del Fuegos, Stand Up, 1987